Word: slump
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...unemployment climbs, inflation rises and the economy lurches toward an expected slump, economists issue dire warnings about "recessionary psychology" -- a pattern of cuts in consumer spending and investment that tends to feed the downward spiral and make any economic falloff even deeper. But there is another, more profound kind of recessionary psychology. It is measured by psychic indicators rather than economic ones. As people change their behavior in the face of layoffs, cutbacks or a sudden drop in net worth, more and more Americans find themselves clinically depressed...
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, people jumped out of windows, joined left-wing movements or sought escape through watching Fred Astaire movies. In the 1970s, they squabbled in gas lines and drifted into the low- level despondency that Jimmy Carter called "our national malaise." The current economic slump -- not yet officially recognized as a recession + -- threatens to be particularly divisive because of the increasing disparity between haves and have-nots. "In the 1930s, everyone was in the same boat and knew other people were suffering too," observes Val Farmer, a clinical psychologist and syndicated columnist from South Dakota...
Psychologists say economic losses are no different from other kinds of losses. Homeowners have more than capital tied up in their homes; when their assets decline in a real estate slump, so does their sense of self-worth. People who have lost their jobs experience anger, denial and a need to grieve, just as they would if they had lost a loved one. This is especially true of the solid, stable employee who has worked in one place for many years. "That person has a mental contract," says Maury Elvekrog, a management psychologist in Birmingham, Mich. "Even though...
...This is just what the doctor ordered. We had to get the offense going and they [Vukonich, Ciavaglia and Donato] got us going," Tomassoni said. "They broke out of their slump...
Even as the case against Manuel Noriega was degenerating into a legal three- ring circus, the country he once dominated was mired in a deep slump. Nearly a year after being installed by the U.S. invasion, the government of President Guillermo Endara is stumbling badly in the monumental chore of rebuilding a country devastated by corruption and the financial squeeze applied by the U.S. during the final two years of Noriega's reign. Though Bush Administration officials praise Endara for his good intentions, they fear that he and his government may not be up to the task of converting Panama...